When it comes to public conversations, I’m pretty much the guy who avoids talking politics and religion.

Politics I largely avoid because I take a dim view of most politicians and their trade. I feel it is rare that one interested in a political career enters the fray with a clear comport of integrity and ambitions outside of self-interests. And should such a venerable, selfless servant win a position in public office, I also tend to believe they do not stay that way very long. That is the nature of politics in the modern world. The lure of the benefits of power is overwhelming, and the rewards of serving special interests are too much for most people to avoid. I am jaded about the public service interests of most of the cogs in our nation’s political machinery, and I presume most politicians are bought and owned.

Religion I likewise largely avoid much discourse on because a) I have a strong sense of what I believe, which, to some, may make me either a narrow dogmatist or a metaphysical idiot, and because b) discourse is not necessarily the best way to express one’s faith. In a world splintered by ideologies and relativism and the need for every one who has a voice to be heard and to be right, I still think the strongest voice behind one’s voice is the display of love. The world is aching to see people who can be trusted, to see people who speak the truth, to see people who actually and genuinely care about others beyond what gets posted by or about them in social media or on the news, to see people who live a life the glows because it is full and overflowing with peace and clarity and hope and resolve- and with outstretched arms and helping hands. The world is hungry to see and to know love. And I am confident that religious debates, while very worthwhile in certain contexts, do less to persuade another of one’s veracity than the quality of one’s life and living.

There are times, though, when words along religious and political lines need to be said, when beliefs need to be articulated, and when ideological grounds need to be taken.

There is no room in America for the harboring of racism.

There is no room in America for the permission or the endorsement of racial hatred, or for the fomenting of racial divisions and racial wars.

The Greatest Generation did not throw itself on the beaches of Normandy or grind through the forests of the Ardennes for the acceptance of such ugliness. Lincoln did not take office and give his life for the acceptance of such evil. Martin Luther King Jr. did not walk into the Lion’s Den of southern discontent and malcontents for the casual accommodation of this.

There is no space in what I’ve known of this best country in the world, of the United States of America, built on the backs of at-one-time immigrants and strangers and foreigners, on the words and works of people who chose to come from disparate places around the globe to become part of a blind and unprejudiced nation, and on the Judeo-Christian precept of “Love your neighbor as yourself”, to permit racial hatred to take root in the soils of what has made America a remarkable place- its dedication to raise and preserve justice and freedom over the societal ills and moral evils that periodically storm and batter the land.

I’m not one to talk politics or religion too much with folks I’m not real close to or comfortable with.

But there is no space for the acceptance and recurrence of the events of Charlottesville in America, because America- my America, is not about organized, formalized, sanctioned hate.

Or, in time, there is a danger that there will be no space for America, illustrious as it has been, as a sanctuary state in the world.

The safe harbor, the haven, will be closed.

But I trust and am hopeful that men and women of good moral fiber and good conscience will step up and fight to see America returns to being a light among the nations that it has always been, because of the goodness of its people, and because of its founding emphases on acceptance, mutuality, community, and commonalities.

“Our father’s God! to thee,
Author of Liberty, to thee we sing;
Soon may our land be bright,
With holy freedom’s right,
Protect us by thy might, Great God, our King.”
– An Abolitionist Verse, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, A. G. Duncan, 1843

“”Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.